Matt Bevin says Mitch McConnell dodging debates

ky 25 bevin. Louisville businessman Matt Bevin, flanked by his family, announces his candidacy on the GOP ticket to challenge U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell. He speaks at the Campbell County Fiscal Court administration building in Newport, Kentucky Wednesday July 24, 2013. The Enquirer/Gary Landers

U.S. Senate candidate Matt Bevin said Thursday that incumbent Mitch McConnell is scared of him and refusing to debate him in the months leading up to the May 20 Republican primary election.

“I think he’s unable to defend his record and he knows it,” Bevin said at a press conference on the University of Louisville’s Shelby Campus. “I think he’s afraid, literally, to be seen on stage with me for a variety of reasons. I think there is a stark difference from a number of perspectives when people both see and hear the two of us.”

But in an emailed response, she suggested that he would not. Accusing Bevin of flip-flopping on positions, including support of the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program, she wrote: “In the interest of consistency, he (Bevin) should probably debate himself and come back after he has declared a winner.”

Bevin said he has accepted debates sponsored by Kentucky Educational Television, The Kenton County Republican Women’s Club, the West Liberty Rotary Club and The American Family Association.

Bevin, 47, said Thursday that he believes McConnell is “dodging debates” because he fears he “will not look well.”

Until this year, the 72-year-old McConnell has never faced more than token opposition in a U.S. Senate primary and has participated in few debates before the general elections when he has run.

Six years ago, he and Democrat Bruce Lunsford debated twice — neither time on statewide television. In 2002, he agreed to debate Democrat Lois Combs Weinberg on Kentucky Educational Television, but she turned him down, saying the September date was too far from the election.

In 1996, McConnell debated Democrat Steve Beshear once on KET and in 1990, he debated Harvey Sloane at a League of Women Voters forum. In his first run for Senate in 1984, incumbent Walter Dee Huddleston gave him only one debate.

McConnell’s camp on Thursday went so far as to suggest that Bevin isn’t qualified to debate because, it claims, he didn’t fare well in an exchange with McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton at the University of Kentucky in September.

"After already losing one debate to our campaign manager ... Bevin has spent the last eight months changing his story to whatever he thinks people want to hear on everything,” Moore said in a statement.

Bevin used Thursday’s press conference to also criticize McConnell for an incident earlier in the week when his campaign barred LEO Weekly news editor Joe Sonka from a press conference and threatened to have him arrested.

Bevin said he would not bar reporters from his campaign events. “It’s nonsense to think that you can box out. It comes from a sense of arrogance and frankly, I think, increasingly, a sense of desperation,” he said.

The McConnell camp first said they barred Sonka because there was no space for him in the press conference, then said it was because other reporters complained about him.

Also on Thursday, the Louisville Tea Party endorsed Bevin. In a statement, tea party president Andrew Schachtner said McConnell’s campaign didn’t respond to a request to speak to the group.

Reporter Joseph Gerth can be reached at (502) 582-4702. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Gerth.